From Cool McCool to Boaty McBoatface: An Investigationy McInvestigation

The U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council developed an adorable notion this week, prompting the kind of tempest British Internet users love to discover in their online teapots. The organization needed an “inspirational” name for its new $288 million polar research ship, so it thought it should maybe ask the Internet for suggestions. Good plan!

Yeah, the top contender as of Friday morning in the public poll NERC set up is still Boaty McBoatface. The submitter, former BBC presenter James Hand, remains sorry-not-sorry, perhaps because other entries include “Big Metal Floaty Thingy-Thing,” “Science!!!” “Its Bloody Cold Here,” and “Usain Boat.” (More sober or poetic voices have recommended “Pillar of Autumn” and “David Attenborough.”) All of this, as Sarah Larimer at the Washington Post points out, amounts to excellent publicity for NERC, though perhaps not of the kind it envisioned. “We are pleased that people are embracing the idea in a spirit of fun,” spokeswoman Alison Robinson told the New York Times. To which the Gray Lady replied: “Sure they are.”

Boaty has already launched a pair of hashtags— #TheInternetNamesSpace and #TheInternetNamesAnimals—that have further furnished the English language with such gifts as Starface Gassy McSmashy (for a supernova), Nopey McNoMyGod (for a spider), and Danger Noodle (for a cobra). But we at Contrarypants McSlatepitchgot to wondering: Where did the naming convention Noun-y McNoun-erson, and its relatives, come from anyway? And why do we find the Internet persona it springs from, a College Humor–esque mix of exuberant immaturity and guilelessness, so delightful?

The practice of affixing “Mc” to nouns, adjectives, or verbs “to create mock names denoting a person who … is considered an exemplar or personification” goes back at least to the late 1940s, according to the OED. The cartoon Cool McCool, about an incompetent spy with an air of mystery, aired in 1966. “Tits McGee” was used on San Diego local TV news in 1974 (at least in the fictional world of Anchorman). A character on the popular ’80s British television show Black Adder described someone as “madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year’s Mr. Madman competition.” And in the 1990s, the Simpsonsreturned several times to the McWell, in one episode referring to a vengeful God as “Killy McGee” and in another placing a character in “Tipsy McStagger’s Good Time Drinking and Eating Emporium.”

By the time Adam Sandler introduced a creature called Fatty McGee on his double platinum comedy album They’re All Gonna Laugh at You in 1993, the parodic “Mc” had absorbed some bite from its association with McDonalds. In the ’80s and ’90s, a dismissive Mc often prefaced “something that is of mass appeal, a standardized or bland variety,” says the OED. In 1986, the sociologist Amitai Etzioni coined the word “McJob” to describe what the novelist Douglas Coupland would later immortalize in Generation Xas “a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector.” Like a McDonald’s hamburger, such positions were cheap, ubiquitous, and un-nourishing. A glib and pandering best-seller was a “McThriller.” A meretricious construction project was a “McMansion.” (Even today, couples in Hong Kong can get McMarried at a fast food outlet for about $1,300.)

But the Internet didn’t take up the “X-y McXerson” construction in earnest until 2001, according to lexicographer Ben Zimmer: “The first [Usenet] appearance of Hottie McHotterson (on rec.games.video.sony),” Zimmer writes, beat out “Fatty McFatterson, Stiffy McStifferson, Drinky McDrinkerson, Jewy McJewerson, etc.” Zimmer also notes a cornucopia of deprecative McNicknames for George W. Bush, including “Chimpy McBunnypants,” “Drinky McCokeSpoon,” and “Smirky McWarHardon.”

Shonda fans, of course, will remember the more amorous McUsagein Grey’s Anatomy, which had lovestruck interns swooning over doctors McDreamy and McSteamy. Today, Mc can still denote doting brain-puddling as well as derision: